Despite eco-meetings, summits, brave words, press releases, and campaigns by the media, the rate and extent of illegal logging is increasing.

I get frustrated by the behavior of illegal loggers and by some of the hyperbole of Greenpeace and its acolytes because the industry I support has superb and transparent environmental credentials. It's a tough problem to handle because politicians who live in distant cities haven't a clue-and probably don't really care-about what goes on in remote forests whose people have no votes.

I've argued our case in these pages and at conferences all over the world. And still we are blamed for the forest practices of a criminal minority; practices which were abandoned long ago by the papermaking industry.

It happened the other week. I was visiting Tilbury, the UK's biggest forest products port. I was there on Stora Enso business; new terminal, new containers and gantries, etc. The port was busier than usual because a ship carrying Indonesian timber was being escorted up the river by police and customs officers. Greenpeace was also there. They accused me, again, of being the mouthpiece of a “Fascist industry.” I responded appropriately.

The ship docked and there was the usual to-and-fro between police and protesters. But the ship unloaded part of its cargo and continued its voyage to Antwerp. This was almost a replay of a visit I made last year, except then there were no police or customs, only aggressive Russian sailors and sodden Greenpeace protesters.

But this timber had been illegally logged from an Indonesian national park known as Tanjung Puting. For U.S. readers, it's a bit like creeping into Yosemite and felling giant redwoods for the Chinese market-and hoping nobody notices!

Greenpeace is the most public critic of these activities, but more gravity has entered the campaign in the form of the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization's (FAO) forestry department. Its independent investigations in Indonesia late last year confirm the worst: that 75% of all logging in Indonesia is illegal.

It has got so bad in that country that the Ministry of Forests operates joint patrols with its armed forces to track ships, barges and trucks in Indonesian waters, rivers and forests. The renegade ships are usually Vietnamese, Malaysian, Korean or Chinese. The illegal loggers are protected by armed gangs, and the FAO notes that there are regular shoot-outs between the bandits and government forces.

The Timber Mafia
But the “timber mafia” is ruthless, well protected and closely linked to the political elite. Some officials sit on the boards of the timber mafia. Greenpeace, the FAO and local news agencies allege that the leading “family” in the region is the conglomerate Rimbunan Hijau of Malaysia, owned by the Tlong dynasty, and which operates in Papua New Guinea, Malaysia and Indonesia. Locally, the family is known as “the untouchables.”

Although Indonesia has signed up to the international Forest Law Enforcement and Governance Process, championed by former U.S. secretary of state, Colin Powell, the Ministry of Forests is under-resourced and is out-gunned—literally and politically—by the armed forces and police, whose up-country officers are vulnerable to kickbacks.

Indonesia has passed national laws banning illegal logging, but the regional police, miles away in remote locations, have neither incentives nor support to enforce those laws.

What also worries me is that China has charged Asia Pulp & Paper (APP) with illegal logging in that country. APP is the Singapore-based subsidiary of the Indonesian conglomerate, Sinar Mas. APP is the industry's most indebted company with debts of $1.75 billion; it has not published accounts since 1999. The charge is that APP has been logging illegally in the China's southwest province of Yunnan. The State Forestry Administration (SFA), backed by the Ministry of State Security, moved against APP last year, four months after the Beijing office of Greenpeace reported the logging activities. An official of the Yunnan forestry department has already been arrested and jailed. The case continues.

APP owns 13 pulp and paper companies and more than 20 sites in China. Its investment in that country is estimated at about $5.5 billion. But, no one's really sure because no accounts are available, according to PriceWaterhouseCoopers.

Sanctions
The main destination of Indonesia's “mafia” timber is Europe and China. In Europe, the UK and German timber trade no longer accepts timber from Indonesian sawmills unless its legality can be proven.

A similar sanction should be imposed by China. But who could influence China's buying policies? My only hope is that the U.S. government, working with AF&PA, can exert that influence. If not, the industry will be accused, wrongly of course, that we collaborate with the timber mafia.

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